Announcements

One unique aspect of the CLC educational experience is the Personalized Learning Plan or PLP.
At every grade level, your child has the opportunity to participate in a
learning activity that is of special interest. This program culminates
in a final PLP that
stretches over the two years of 7th and 8th grade, with the learning
outcomes presented to the entire CLC community during the winter Learner
Exhibition.

We have discussed the best possible ways to approach personalized learning for our 1/2 CLC children. The educators would like all of the children to undertake and participate in a PLP. At school, we support the PLP in the following ways:

1. Introduce the concept of PLP to the whole class and brainstorm some possible ideas for doing a PLP.

2. Discuss multiple intelligences with the learners and how they can develop their intelligences.

3. Provide classroom time for each child to present their PLP.

I
am always available to answer any quesitons regarding this project,
although the work for this project will be done at home. As a reminder, I
do not intend for this to become an onerous or stressful burden on 1/2
families. This project should be a positive learning experience for your
child where they are able to use their areas of strength to help
develop their other intelligences. Please read the list below to get an
idea of what children have done for their PLP's in the past at our grade levels.

Some PLP ideas for First and Second Grade

• Grow crystals

• Create a community service project, for example a food or clothing drive, bake sale or lemonade stand

• Plant a garden with your parents and take some photos. Put these on a poster to show how the garden grew

• Make up a song and share it with the class

• Make up a board game using your favorite soccer teams as players

• Make up a play and video tape it, using your friends or siblings as actors

• Learn all about some insects and bring pictures and teach the class

•
Grow bacteria from your hands before and after washing them and show
the results (This one really helped with the hand washing in Marianne's
classroom one year!)

• Keep a pet care journal in which you write or draw about what you do to help care for your pet

• Raise silkworms

• Learn and cook a recipe. Bring in samples to share with the class!

As you can see from this list, the possibilities are as varied as the children in the class.

I have discussed the process with the children. Here are the next steps for your learner to complete:1. Print and complete the PLP planning forms (attached) by Monday, April 2nd.The
first step should help your child determine which areas are his/her
strengths and which they may want to develop. The second half is for brainstorming ideas for PLP projects. Please record two ideas onto the survey.

2. Your child will then choose one idea for the PLP next week (I will meet with the learners the week of April 2nd to review their surveys and ideas).

4. Choose a date for your child to present the PLP. Learners may present their PLP during
the month of May and the first week of June. I have set up a doodle
calendar, so you may choose a date and time that works best for you.
Parents are welcome and encouraged to come watch their child present: http://www.doodle.com/n6f75mxmzveuy569

I'm looking forward to participating in the PLP experience with you and your children! Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions or comments about the PLP's.

Tomorrow, some of the learners will be participating in book groups.
(Not all students are in book groups at this time. Later in the school year
all the learners will have an opportunity to participate in book
groups.)

Today your child brought home a book group contract in his/her homework folder. (It is also attached to this email, if it did not make it home.) Please read and review the contract together, sign the contract and
return it to school. It is important for learners to complete their reading
and work before each book group meeting to ensure the success of book group meetings.

Book
groups will be held on Tuesday mornings. Each group meets once a
week and will have time during the school day to complete assignments.
If assignments are not completed during the school day, learners may
bring their work home to finish. Each learner will have a book group
folder to help them stay organized and keep their work together.

Thank you for your support and please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

As you know, we are learning about reducing,
reusing, and recycling in the classroom. Today, I surprised the learners
at lunch and collected all of their trash. We found that as a class, we
had thrown away 25 pieces of trash. Next we sorted out all the
recyclables and compost materials and reduced our waste to 15 pieces. Not too bad, but I know we can do
even better! Most of the trash was from small plastic bags and snack packaging.

As a class, we brainstormed ways we could reduce our trash even more at snack and lunch time. These ideas included:

-pack
snacks and sandwiches in reusable containers. Even recyclables like
plastic yogurt containers can be reused to pack lunch box items.

-buy bulk sizes of snack foods and pack them in reusable containers.

-use a reusable water bottle or drink container.

-pack reusable utensils and cloth napkins.

I
told the learners that as an experiment, we would see if we could
reduce the amount of trash in our snacks and lunches each day this week.
I will be collecting the trash each day and we will graph our results.
Please involve your child as much as possible in the packing of his or
her lunch each day. Have your child problem solve ways of reducing the
waste. If your child gets hot lunch, he or she can figure out ways to
cut down on snack time trash.

The 1/2
class is putting together a group of Dad's to be our chili cook-off
cooks this year. John Thompson has volunteered to be one of the Dad's
(with lots of Mom support behind him), we need a few more to share the
load. It involves, making the chili (again, lots of mom support here),
transporting and serving the chili the night of the event (Oct 14th). A
theme is encouraged, we're in it to win it and we're not beyond wowing
the judges with themes and endearing dad charm.